A bemused Jacob Maitland had followed the Indian servant down the winding staircase to the entry hall and had been halfway our the door when behind him he had heard the raised voice of Winfield Phillips calling him back.
"Oh, and, ah, one other thing, Maitland, if you please! If you should happen to hear from Dr. Lapham or anyone else at Miskatonic, please be sure to give them my regards and to convey my apologies for what I now realize was a joke in rather bad taste. Thanks so much, old man."
Maitland had felt surprisingly relieved to be behind the wheel again and retracing his path through the dismal acres of Durnham Beach and Hubble's Field, silently eating up the miles back to the palm-girded campus of the Sanbourne Institute of Pacific Antiquities.
THERE his tale ended as well, as his voice trailed off into a question mark. He had asked Dr Zarnak nothing specific, but both men knew that the whole story was in fact a question, a puzzle, the beginning of a story and not the end of one.
"First, my young colleague, tell me, have you brought Phillips' request before the trustees yet?"
"No, all this happened little more than a week ago, and the trustees won't be meeting for another month and a half."
"Good, good," nodded the other, "You must never relay that request, for Phillips must never regain those volumes. I am sure that his uncle never yielded them up to Harold Hadley Copeland willingly in the first place."
"Then how ...?" The rounding eyes and rising brows of the younger man finished his question for him.
"I am not at full liberty to say, Mr. Maitland. Suffice it to say that Professor Copeland possessed something well beyond a theoretical knowledge of certain matters that had occasioned his acquaintance with Hiram Stokely in the first place. Let us say that there were at his service certain resources that enabled him to drive a hard bargain and to get what he wanted. Though you can see the good it did poor Copeland in the end."
"All right, sir, but what about the business of the 'joke' Phillips had made? That struck me as odd, hardly characteristic of the man’s general mien."
“You are to be congratulated. You have the keen eye of the researcher. As for the so-called joke, I think I can provide a comprehensive answer there." So saying, Zarnak reached down for a leather valise he had carried in with him, opened it, and deposited before Jacob Maitland a neatly typed manuscript of some forty pages. Alone on the top sheet, like a voice crying in the wilderness, stood the single terse line "Statement of Winfield Phillips."
"Go ahead, read it now. It will not take long, and it contains a number of things you will need to know for our conversation to continue. I shall meditate in the meantime."
So Maitland read, unperturbed at first, then with a growing sense of subtle alarm. The typescript began on a somber note, anticipating the writer’s own imminent death. Phillips had composed the narrative in the very same house, no doubt in the same room, in which Maitland had interviewed him less than a week ago. He told of his mission to Santiago, his meeting with his cousin (and here Maitland could read between the lines some possible justification for the rumors of the pair’s homosexuality), and their initial exploration of their uncle's mansion. Phillips’ breathless description of his chance discovery of a shelf full of little-known classics of the Decadent movement left Maitland cold, as his own interests ran decidedly toward the scientific, nor the literary, much less the polluted tributary of the Decadents. When he got to the subsequent disclosure of centuried copies of John Dee's Necronomicon and Gaspard du Nord’s edition of the Livre d'Ivon, his pulses quickened; here were the books whose hypothesized presence had motivated his trip out to the Stokely, now Phillips, estate. He was aghast at the implied death of Bryan Winfield and half-suspected that the narrator protested too much his innocence in the affair. All in all, much that had been unclear was explained in these mad pages, and yet somehow everything seemed even more mysterious than before.
Zarnak’s eyes met his as Maitland looked up from the last page. “You are perhaps wondering whether Phillips gave in to the voices that beckoned to him in the end. Deep down, from what you have told me. I think we both know the answer to that.”
"Then this is no joke? I was afraid it wasn’t. What was rhe 'joke in poor taste', then? And how did you manage to get hold of this manuscript. Dr. Zarnak?"
"I came by it through unexceptional means. It seems that Winfield Phillips mailed the manuscript to his old mentor. Seneca Lapham, no doubt immediately after typing it. It was his last act while in reasonable possession of his faculties. It was not long before he regretted having sent it off and wanted very much to allay the fears and questions his shocking account must have occasioned at Miskatonic. He wrote again, assuring Dr. Lapham that the earlier parcel had simply been an endeavor to fictionalize his visit to Durnham Beach. It was the discovery of the various chapbooks and manuscripts of Henquist, Gordon, Ariel Prescott, and the rest that had inspired him to seize upon the macabre qualities of his visit, the funeral, the old, mildewed mansion, and so forth, and utilize them in a pastiche of his own. He claimed he realized only after having mailed it off that he had omitted a cover letter explaining the fictional nature of the whole thing and wanted to supply that lack now."
"To tell you the truth, Dr. Zarnak, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have been satisfied with that explanation. But I take it Professor Lapham was not?"
“Correct. He had ample reason to know that truth is often very much stranger than fiction. Then there was the complete surprise of young Winfield abandoning his position at Miskatonic. Besides, even if the manuscript had been a piece of fiction, why on earth would Phillips ever have thought the serious-minded Seneca Lapham would have wanted to read its disgusting contents? He is not a man for such trifles, as Phillips knew better than most.
"Dr. Lapham did not reply to either mailing from his former assistant but instead passed the manuscript on to me for my opinion. When I heard from you, I knew you must see it as well. It is certain that the narrative contains elements that the secretive Phillips now wishes had never been revealed, facts that presumably may be used against him. For instance, did you notice Phillips' initial puzzlement over the unaccountable fact that his uncle, whom he did not know and had not met, should make him and his cousin bis sole beneficiaries? Hiram Stokely had become estranged from both branches of the family to which the two young men belonged. What could have been his motivation? Something else: What was the reason for the hasty, closed-casket funeral?"
Maitland lowered his eyes, shading his features with his hand, "Frankly, I’d rather not guess. But why bother with Phillips? If he turns out to be every bit as mad as that fellow Hodgkins, it's his own business, surely? Why appoint ourselves his inquisitors?"
Zarnak knew that the younger man was having second thoughts. His earlier forebodings were now giving way to fear, and this he sought to rationalize as much as to disguise. "Mr. Maitland, Jacob, why then did you call me into the matter, if not to get to the bottom of it?"
"My only interest in Winfield Phillips was in the rare books his uncle left him. I’ve told you, even in that errand I was only carrying out the wishes of my superiors here at the Institute."
“Come, Jacob, you don't even believe that yourself, I am quite a good judge of first impressions, and I realized when we met that you were a true delver into secrets. And we both know that most secret things are concealed for their danger. The righteous hide them away lest their disclosure prove dangerous, while the wicked hide them only till an opportune time, when the secret things would do the most damage. You knew that from the start, and I believe you know what is at stake here, specifically.”